‘Anti-Aging’--New Wrinkle in Skin Care
Help is here. Estee Lauder’s Night Repair Cellular Recovery Complex can help restore skin damaged by fluorescent office lights, says a saleswoman in Los Angeles. In a “race against time,” say accompanying brochures, it enhances “the natural rate of repair of cells damaged during the day”--at a cost of $35 for 0.87 ounce, or $60 for 1.75 ounces.
Revlon’s Ultima II “Supportive ProCollagen anti-aging complex helps firm slackening skin.” And the “skincare technology” in Elizabeth Arden’s Millenium line accelerates “cell renewal” until the skin “is renewing itself at the rate of younger skin.”
Those who don’t quite understand the words get the idea: The stuff will keep their skin from aging. Those who do understand the words find no idea at all: “These kinds of claims don’t add up,” says Ronald M. Reisner, chief of dermatology at UCLA Medical School. “It’s all generalities like ‘cell renewal’ and ‘cell repair’--meaningless terms without more specific definition.”
Injecting a bit of science into cosmetics campaigns is old hat, but the notion that cosmetics might not only clean and clear skin but rejuvenate it is very contemporary hubris. Industry observers believe the kickoff was a few years ago when heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard lent (or rented) his name to the promotion of a skin-care line called Glycel, one of whose ingredients, glycosphingolipid, supposedly rejuvenated skin cells and thus removed wrinkles. After that, “everyone jumped in,” says Allan Mottus, whose newsletter, the Informationist, serves the health and beauty industry.
According to Goldman, Sachs & Co. senior analyst Jack Salzman, “anti-aging goop, cellular reconstruction cream, and eye-of-newt products for the Beverly Hills set” now account for $250 million in sales. Mostly upscale lines sold in department stores, they’re a small part of the $2.5-billion skin-care market, but very visible, particularly since the Food and Drug Administration ordered them last year to temper or prove their claims.
The promotions at least touch on reality with little, tangential references to scientific fact. They show slides, diagrams, before-and-after magnifications of the skin’s layers--epidermis, dermis, the basement membrane between. They print primitive “graphs” proving efficacy. They discuss rehydrating the skin’s surface, restoring the basement membrane and the skin’s “support” layers.
Dermis Does Not Renew
But magic lotions “have no greater use than any other stuff that will hold water in,” says Reisner. Treatments advertised as penetrating, repairing and renewing the deepest, “support” layers of the skin probably aren’t because “the ingredients usually identified on labels as doing the job are such large molecules,” says H. J. Eiermann, director of the FDA’s division of colors and cosmetics, “that they can’t get to the dermis.” No matter if they could, because “the dermis does not renew itself,” says Eiermann, “and that’s where wrinkling occurs.” And if the focus is on epidermal cell renewal, “the fact that I shave,” says Eiermann, “also speeds up cell renewal, and that effect doesn’t mean wrinkles disappear.”
With most such claims, there’s “no convincing evidence,” says Reisner. “I don’t think they’ve published in reputable scientific journals; there are no double-blind studies, nothing defining the exact nature of the substance, no hard information to examine, to read, study, evaluate, and repeat.”
As the claims became more and bold, they did raise questions, but nothing to cause promoters concern until the FDA’s challenge last year. “A certain embellishment, or puffery, is necessary and fun,” says Eiermann, “but there’s a limit to how far misrepresentation can go. I call them hard-core and soft-core claims; when it gets hard core, the agency has to step in.”
The FDA’s challenge focused on the type, not the substance, of the claims. These are not cosmetic but drug claims, explains Eiermann. “If they talked about making you look beautiful, no problem. But if they say you look more beautiful because they rejuvenated the underlying layers of the skin or sped up cell renewal, they’re talking about a physiological process, one that affects the structure and functions of the body, and then it’s a drug. And since the intended effect isn’t documented in the scientific literature, it’s a new drug and the manufacturer has to demonstrate it safe and effective.”
A year ago April, the FDA sent regulatory letters to 23 companies--including Estee Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, several Revlon lines (not including Ultima II), Avon, Shiseido, Clarins, Chanel and Coty. Quoting specific statements, the letters said such claims were more appropriate to drugs than cosmetics and should be changed, or, as with all new drugs, proved--a policy the agency says applies to the entire industry, not just the cited companies.
For a year, with few exceptions, the companies protested that their claims were strictly cosmetic, that the FDA should be more flexible, that they were working on the problem. Finally, this past April, the FDA said the companies had 30 days to start changing the claims or proving them or be subject to further action. Not surprisingly, none has announced that proof is coming.
Up to $60 an Ounce
This doesn’t mean the claims will immediately disappear. The FDA will “visit the cosmetics firms to get visible, tangible assurance that this is in the works,” says FDA spokesman Emil Corwin in Washington, but, since safety isn’t at issue, the agency won’t be removing products from store shelves.
Fortunately, for all the suggestion of increased cellular activity, the anti-aging products are “on the whole probably harmless if you’re not allergic to them,” says Reisner. “The large cosmetic houses are probably very responsible,” at least in terms of safety.
Moreover, anyone irritated that cosmetic companies are getting rich on such foolishness might remember who’s being foolish: Most of these wet-look, skin-growth jellies exist for the relatively few who can shell out $20, $40, even $60 an ounce. Even if the efficacy is uncertain, such consumers can afford what one New York woman calls “the Pascalian Wager of cosmetics. I’m sure my friends who have money use the stuff,” she says, “because what have they got to lose but the money?”
